Columnist Dean Juipe: Zealots can give religion a bad name

Dean Juipe

Monday, April 9, 2001 | 9:46 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

Sitting in the front row at Miami's AmericanAirlines Arena, Muhammad Ali was as conspicuous as ever.

Everyone in the big crowd that was taking in Sunday's fairly meaningless yet nationally televised NBA game between the Heat and the New York Knicks had to notice a man who not only was a great fighter in his prime, but one who might very well be the most recognizable person of any walk of life in the world today. Ali, as they say, transcends sports.

It was troubling then, as always, to see him on camera with his eyes closed and his head down, as if he was oblivious to everything around him. The victim of a medical condition that leaves him with a blank appearance, Ali might well have been asleep.

Or he may have been thinking of Allah.

I know I was.

Allah played a prominent role in a couple of stories I did last week on boxer Prince Naseem Hamed, who wears his Islamic faith on his sleeve and puts a religious slant on most everything he does. As such, it became virtually impossible to write with any depth on Hamed without integrating religion into the picture.

He said some things that could have been taken as alarming, such as rationalizing every aspect of his life as having been predetermined by Allah.

A reader and an authority on the Middle East responded by saying Hamed's proclamations were no different than that of a terrorist, in that each will be unaffected by guilt as he goes about his daily routine. If the fighter loses or if someone gets hurt by the terrorist's bomb, it's all laid on the doorstep of Allah.

Well, Hamed did lose, of course. Marco Antonio Barrera starched him over 12 rounds Saturday night at the MGM Grand Garden, and, predictably, Hamed took it in stride and said afterward it was all part of Allah's plan.

It dawned on me -- in this religious period where Passover and Easter are upon us -- that Allah deserves better.

What he and what all deities deserve is to be spared from athletes who say their fate in a given sporting event is in their god's hands. It's a cop-out, pure and simple.

Hamed, for instance, was unresponsive to his corner's urgings and relatively flat for his Las Vegas debut. Perhaps he hadn't trained hard enough, or well enough, or perhaps at $6 million or so for one night's work he just didn't care about the fight's outcome.

But the people who paid to see him expected better. They also would liked to have seen him come up with a better excuse than to say it was his god's will that he stumble and lose this particular fight.

That's too easy.

Invoking a supreme being to intercede in a sporting event is asking a little too much. Look at it this way: If player "A" asks his god for a fat pitch over the center of the plate that he can hit out over the left-field wall, won't that personal glory for him come at the expense of a pitcher on the mound who may have been praying for a strikeout?

Better to step into the batter's box or the ring, give it your best effort and leave your personal beliefs out of it.

Maybe that's what Ali was thinking when the camera caught him resting his eyes in Miami.